Word of the Day

Cackleberry, “an egg, a hen’s egg,” is a piece of facetious American slang. The word is a compound of the verb cackle “to utter a shrill, broken cry such as a hen makes” and the common noun berry “small fruit without a pit,” also used often in compounds such as strawberry or gooseberry.

Passe-partout, “something that provides a universal means of passage; a master key, skeleton key,” comes from the French compound passe-partout, whose literal meaning is “(it) passes everywhere.” In French the phrase originally meant “a person who can go anywhere,” and slightly later “a master key.” The French verb passer “to pass” comes from Vulgar Latin passāre “to walk, step, pass,” from the Latin noun passus “pace, step.” Partout is a compound of par “through” and tout “all.” Par comes from the Latin preposition per “through”; tout comes from Latin tōtus “all, the whole of, complete.” Passe-partout entered English in the 17th century.

The English adjective jocular “given to or suited to joking or jesting; facetious” comes straight from the Latin adjective joculāris “humorous, laughable, facetious,” which, used as the neuter plural noun joculāria, means “jests, jokes.” Joculāris, a derivative of the noun jocus “a jest, joke,” comes from the widespread Proto-Indo-European root yek-, yok- “to speak, speak solemnly, pray.” In other ancient Italic languages, such as Umbrian (spoken north and east of Rome), iuka means “prayers”; in Oscan (spoken around Naples), iúkleí means “(in) consecration.” The root variant yek- appears in Old Saxon and Old High German gehan, jehan “to speak, acknowledge, confess.” The suffixed variant yekti- yields Middle Welsh ieith and Breton iez “prayers,” and in far-off Turkestan, both Tocharian languages, A and B, have the root yask- “to demand, beg.” Jocular entered English in the first half of the 17th century.

Campestral, “relating to fields or open country,” comes from Latin campestris “relating to fields or plains; flat, level,” a derivative of campus “field” and the adjective suffix -estris. Campus has no reliable etymology in Latin, but some of its senses are very important. The most important campus in Roman life was the Campus Martius “the Field of Mars” (named after an altar dedicated to the god Mars). The Campus Martius was originally pastureland outside the walls of Rome and therefore suitable for military exercises, army musters, and assemblies of legions before processing in triumphs through the city. Campestral entered English in the early 18th century.

Brabble is an uncommon verb and noun meaning “to quarrel over trifles; a noisy quarrel.” Its etymology is obscure, but most authorities think brabble comes from the Middle Dutch verb brabbelen “to quarrel, stammer, babble” (there is no connection between babble and brabble). One relatively early citation of brabble in the sense “to quarrel over trifles” dates from the first half of the 16th century: It reads “And then they brable with us about the translation,” a quotation from John Field, originally an Anglican clergyman, later a radical Puritan clergyman. Brabbling over a translation may seem nowadays like a petty academic quarrel, but Field was talking about John Calvin’s sermons, which were explosive at that time and could result in one’s painful death as a heretic. Brabble entered English in the first half of the 16th century.